


Eliminating the Impossible

by orphan_account



Category: Inception (2010), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Coma, Crossover, Dreamsharing, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Sherlock's mind messes with the laws of dreams, happy endings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 02:30:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1209427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is bored. The cases are dull, the people are dull, even John has fallen into an infuriatingly normal pattern: eat, sleep, work, read. </p><p>Only John isn't real. None of it is.</p><p>The real John Watson is racing against the clock of Sherlock's dying mind, but in his coma Sherlock has convinced himself that he doesn't need to wake up. The dream is his reality now. The real world has fallen away.</p><p>There is a way to break into Sherlock's mind. There is a way to share dreams.</p><p>And John must do the impossible, must convince Sherlock that his world is not real. That he needs to wake up, and return to reality. To John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Foreword ~ Skip if you have watched Inception

**Author's Note:**

> This movie completely blew my mind, and then I began to wonder how Sherlock Holmes would handle his dreams, a place where there is no supposed logic anymore.
> 
> Hope you like it. 
> 
> Please read the note below.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You could probably read this without watching the movie Inception, but this is just to be safe.
> 
> FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS IF YOU HAVE WATCHED INCEPTION
> 
> This is just an explanation of the logistics in a dream for this universe.

***FOREWORD FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT WATCHED INCEPTION***  
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING MOVIE

OTHERWISE, SKIP TO CHAPTER ONE

This is to explain the logistics of this universe, because without having watched the movie you might become a bit confused. I'm fairly certain you can proceed without reading this and not get too confused, but I'd like to be safe.

Inception is set in a universe of the modern world, only we have the ability to share dreams through connections with a device that sedates and connects users with drugs. Dream sharing was originally developed by the government for military use, so soldiers could stab and kill each other in the dream and it would feel completely real, only to have none of it do physical harm. 

When you die in a dream, you wake up.

Usually.

If you are heavily sedated, and unable to wake up, you could fall into Limbo, the shores of your subconsciousness, so deep inside the dream that you could be stuck there for what feels like eternity, until your mind has completely gone:

TIME IS DIFFERENT IN DREAMS.

There are different layers in a dream state. First layer is the one you wake up in when you first fall asleep. Imagine this first layer to be say, a hotel.

If you were to fall asleep in the hotel, you would sink into the second layer, and so on. Three layers in a dream is the farthest anyone's ever gone, and it is very unstable at that point.

Time changes layer to layer. Five minutes in the real world would feel like an hour in the first layer of the dream. 

Ten hours asleep in real life would feel like a week in the first layer. 

Second layer: six months. Third layer: ten years.

In Limbo, ten hours asleep could very well be a lifetime.

In limbo, there is usually no logic. It is pure creation based on emotions and memories, normally. 

Now the movie Inception is named after the job the main protagonists must preform: inception. In this universe dream sharing is also used in illegal methods to steal ideas from a person's mind: inception is quite the opposite.

Inception is the planting of an idea into someone's mind.

This is very hard to do. To make it genuine (so that the subject thinks they've thought of the idea themselves) it needs to be in the most basic form. Rather than tell the person "Think about elephants.", you have to carefully suggest at the idea until they adopt it as their own.

The movie explains all this better than I do.

(major plot spoiler for movie)

In the movie Inception, the main character plants the idea in his wife's mind and it eventually leads to her suicide. The idea was that her world was not real, that she needed to wake up (die) and return to her real family. He did this in an effort to convince her to wake up from Limbo, after the two of them explored too deep and became stuck there for what felt like decades. A lifetime.

Just to clarify, this all happens before the main events of the movie. So minor spoiler, I suppose.

Knowing this, I think you should go and watch this movie. It is my favorite film of all time, and the soundtrack is the absolute best thing in the world.

The sheer potential of this universe is amazing.


	2. The Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He's dreamt up London," John finally says, looking around, into the trash bin next to the bench and nudging the grass under his feet. It all looks real, impossibly detailed. A woman jogs by, and the movement brushes air against John's face. "All of London, perfectly."
> 
> "He's dreamed up more than that," Eames breathed, turning to Cobb. "This is the largest dream I've ever seen. For all we know he could have dreamed up the entire world."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always wondered how Sherlock's mind would deal with the dream world. It is, after all, pure creation, no logic.

Sherlock is asleep when Mycroft comes in, and wakes up to the sight of his older brother sitting  
smug and proper, twirling that damn umbrella of his. To make matters worse, he's sitting in John's damn armchair.

“Sleeping? How domestic of you.” 

Sherlock doesn’t allow himself to yawn, to stretch, to even show the slightest sign disorientation. He glares at Mycroft with as much ire as he can manage laying down. 

“Leave, or tell me what you want.” he says, wishing John would come home. Mycroft hated not having privacy while he tried to coerce him into suicide MI6 missions. 

Sherlock knows he isn’t far from accepting one; the past few months have been the dullest in a long time. It’s as if the criminal world has gone underground.

“I’m here to wake you up, Sherlock.” Mycroft’s voice in irritatingly sly, perpetually condescending. He knows something Sherlock does not, and it's something remarkably important to him. “Your world is a mere shade of the real one. You know what I mean, that place you claim no part in. Reality.”

“What are you even talking about?” Sherlock snaps, lifting his head only a fraction. He keeps his voice carefully controlled, keeps his complete confusion deep inside is mind. "I think you've finally cracked, Mycroft." 

Mycroft preens in the attention and Sherlock wants to chuck a cushion at his head. As if he could hear the thoughts in Sherlock's mind, Mycroft gets up to leave, pausing at the door. 

“Give my regards to Doctor Watson. You really _don’t_ have an understanding of him, do you?" There is something off in Mycroft's voice, something Sherlock just only picking up. the slightest change in tone, a minute change in speech pattern. "Tonight he’ll ask you to get the head out of the fridge and read another James Bond novel until you comment that it's dull. He will update his blog before eating, and check the hit count after dinner.”

“Such lovely deductions, brother.” Sherlock glares into the ceiling and tries, for once, to not unravel this riddle. Mycroft did always try and be clever; whatever he was trying to say was not worth the brain power. “Is there a point in them?”

“Am I wrong?” Mycroft asks, ignoring his last question. Sherlock can feel himself huffing, because no, Mycroft was spot on. It was what John did, how he acted. 

Predictable.

That evening Sherlock hides John’s laptop away and only gives it back after they’ve eaten. He bites his tongue when he goes to comment on how horribly boring each and every one of Jonn's books are.

 

*

 

”Hello?”

The voice sounds the same as it had four years ago, gravely and naturally flirtatious. Of all the people he had known in the army, Eames is perhaps the only one who came out almost entirely the same as he had come in. That is to say, with a fair share of damaged goods and no story behind them.

“Hello, Eames. This is John Watson.” 

There is a surprised pause, but John expects it. He hasn’t seen the man in almost half a decade, and their last exchange had ended in Eames having to shoot everyone in the head. 

To save them, of course, but it had still been a rather unpleasant moment in his life.

“Oh my, John Watson.” he says at last, and in the background John can hear the distant hum of a bass line. “How have you been doing, mate? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I’m doing fine. Well not really, actually. That’s why I called.” There's laughter over the line, the strum of music slowly dying away. “Are you busy?”

“If you call bored drinking a business, sure.” Eames laughs in the easy way he does, and John just catches himself laughing back. “What do you need?”

“I have a job for you,” 

He hesitates, not sure how Eames will react. Militarized dream sharing is a far cry from the illegal activities Eames is known for nowadays. It doesn't matter, he decides. For Sherlock, after all.

“Inception.”

To his surprised, Eames laughs, sounding rather pleased. “So you heard about that little job?” There is pride in his voice, a touch of nostalgia. “I can do that. How complex is the idea?” 

“I need you to go into my… friend’s mind and convince him to wake up. The doctors are not authorized to make any changes within his psyche, but they say it’s as if he’s dreamt up an entire replica of this world. He’s populated it with real life projections and he just lives there, like how he used to, thinking that it's life.” John breathes in deeply. "He's lost track of reality."

Eames is quiet for a moment, and when he answers his voice has turned morose, sad even. 

“That’s extremely dangerous, John. I have a friend who... he did the exact same thing. The idea would need to be fully formed, completely, no loop holes. It would be dangerous. Is your friend asleep?”

“He’s in a coma.” John replies, swallowing. The plastic chair he’s been sat on for the past hour is suddenly stiffer, and the hospital air seems stifling. “He’s been in a coma for two months... Jumped off a rooftop."

“How deep have the doctors gone into the dream state?” 

“They aren't sure of the layer.” John remembers something they had told him in passing, remembers the word from training lectures in the military. “They think he’s living in limbo.”

There is a violent swear from over the phone. “Alright,” Eames finally sighs. “Then we don’t really know what to expect.”

“What do you mean?” John almost hisses over the phone, making an effort to sound dangerously calm. “What’s wrong?”

“Limbo is the deepest layer.” Eames explains, sounding rather stressed about it. “Undefined creation space for your mind, and once you’re there its almost impossible to discern reality from the dream, to remind yourself to wake up. Time isn’t exactly set, per se.”

“And that means?” John is aware that he is speaking just a tad too loud, that the children across the hall have begun to stare. He lowers his voice, leans back in the chair. “What would that mean?”

“It would mean that we don’t know how long it feels like he’s been stuck down there. It could have been seconds, but most likely it’s been years. Decades. Months, if you’re lucky.” 

John doesn’t speak for a while, and neither does Eames. He stares at the white door to the room where Sherlock is currently resting, hooked to machines and dreaming, and wonders if in Sherlock’s mind he has already lived a hundred years. If, when they wake him up, and they _will,_ they will find themselves speaking to an old soul.

“Can you do the job?” John finally says, running a hand through his hair. Sherlock’s brain activity, while remarkably above average, is slowly decreasing. He is dying, and in a few months his mind might be as lifeless as his body. “He won’t last much longer.”

“I'll get my team together." Eames replies. "We can be there in a week at the latest. Are you still in London?"

"Bart's Hospital," John spots Molly heading towards his down the hall and waves. "I've got to go. What will the fee be?" 

John doesn't have much money, but it's not as if he would have a limit as to the amount he'd pay for Sherlock's life. 

"Consider it a favor for a friend." Eames says. "Or an apology, for shooting you in the head."

John laughs quietly, although only a fraction of the sound is genuine.

"I think I would have liked to wake up."

 

John barely spends any time in the flat anymore, rarely even sleeps there. They've got lounges in the hospital where he is now as familiar with the couches as all the actual employees are.

Every moment that he isn't working at the surgery, he is spending at Sherlock's side. The people within the hospitals, regulars and workers a like, know of him now. If not by name, then he is that man, the one who is heartbroken over his detective friend's failed suicide.

Sometimes the nurses make a passing comment about how awful it must be, for his partner to be in this endless coma, and John has stopped correcting them, doesn't have the heart to. He doesn't think, as horrible as the thought is, that if any of his other friends were to go comatose he'd care this much. He doesn't think he'd be at their bedside day in and day out, that he'd talk to them even with the knowledge that they can't hear his words.

Sometimes he reads to Sherlock. Sometimes he reads out of an encyclopedia and other times he reads James Bond just to see if Sherlock would rise from the coma to shut him up.

He doesn't. He just sleeps, unnervingly still, and dreams.

People don't understand his determination to stick by Sherlock's unconscious side. He doesn't fault them for it. He barely understands himself.

He steps out of the cab after paying and walks into the hospital, feet tracing a well worn path to Sherlock's room while his mind worries, worries over the decreasing activity of Sherlock's brain, worries about what Eames had said about inception, worries about the fact that Sherlock has literally convinced himself that the dream is reality.

A small part of him wonders how events have played out in the dream. He wonders how Sherlock imagines him, what his projection would act like. It must be spot on, the combination of John's rather dull persona and Sherlock's observational skills. Sherlock probably has John's character down to an exact science. 

He has never been so wrong, although its not until a week later that he discovers this. When Eames arrives with a team of four, they all know a great deal more about Sherlock and John than they ought to. Specifically Sherlock, and it is specifically the man named Arthur, with slicked back, dark hair and a fondness for sweater vests that has done his research so well.

The first thing Eames does upon arrival is ask to meet Mycroft.

"He's our forger," Cobb explains to him, as they watch Eames swagger his way into the Diogenes Club. Mycroft had been exponentially more cooperative the moment he realized what Eames and the team were there to accomplish. "He can disguise himself as anyone within a dream, and then socialize with the subject as if he's someone they know."

"And he wants to impersonate Mycroft." John says dubiously, imagining Eames, suave, brash Eames pretending to be Mycroft in all his propriety, all his formal style.

"He can do it." Cobb replies, sounding sure. "Eames is the best in his area."

He is relaxed for the first time since John had met him only a few hours before, a far cry from the stony faced man who John had immediately realized was the 'friend' Eames had spoken of, the one with bad experiences with inception. 

He's the subtle leader of their entire group, authority obvious in the way they organize around him, setting up all the equipment in 221B at his behest. 

The rest of the team is still lounging around in Baker Street. They are a rather unique bunch, but it's obvious they've worked together before in the way that they talk, inside jokes abound. Arthur and Eames seem to be not quite an item, and the former is their primary researcher. He now knew more about Sherlock than John knew about Sherlock, although they are hard facts. Arthur knows things like shoe size and family members.

John knows useless things, like favorite brand of tea and morning routine and how he sleeps after a case as opposed to after a night of violin concertos. 

Ariadne is their architect, a bright student amongst dream sharing veterans. While she is kind, she always seemed to be walking on eggshells when he and Cobb are together, as if she knows something he doesn't. He's almost positive it has to do with the similarity between this inception and whatever had happened before to Cobb. 

He doesn't ask. The look both of them adopt whenever they touch upon the topic of the idea being implanted is enough. 

Yusuf, an eccentric man who John could hazard was from India, is their chemist. He handles the heavy sedatives they needed to go so deep into the dream, the ones that would prevent them from escaping before due time. 

Cobb himself is American and that is all John can hazard about him. He wears his blonde hair slicked back like Eames and Arthur, and squints at the most inopportune of times. 

His 'totem' is a metal spinning top, that spins and spins in a dream and never falls. 

John is the tourist in this whole scheme, although Eames makes a passing comment about John's skills both in combat and medicine that offshoot a collection of comments about a man named Saito, who had apparently been the tourist the last time they had preformed inception together. 

"You're basically just along for the ride," Arthur had said. "Although with the difference in emotional connection from that last job, I think we'll need you in person to convince him to wake up in the end."

"Right," John had said, even if he didn't understand at all. 

 

In the ride back to 221B, Cobb tells him about totems, about the small unique object every dream sharer carries to keep track of reality. 

The moment John is back home, he heads straight into Sherlock's room, and takes his magnifying glass. It is small, unexpectedly heavy, and worn around the edges in a way that must be unique. Most importantly, it is something of Sherlock's, and John knows he of all people can bring him back to reality.

That is, once he is brought back himself.

 

Eames comes back to the flat not three hours later, and together all six of them pile into Sherlock's old land rover and drive to the hospital, Arthur carrying a silvery suitcase. Everyone save Ariadne and Yusuf is armed. 

"We need an idea of how his dreams are constructed, since we can't completely design it like normal." Arthur explained, when John had asked why they were going into his mind so soon. "We need to be able to know the dream so Ariadne can alter it when the time comes, and so we know what to expect."

 

John makes sure there are no doctors or nurses in with Sherlock before motioning for all of them to cram into the rather small room. While John sits on the plastic hospital chair he always does, right next to Sherlock's bed, Eames and his team have to sit on the floor, a few of them already inserting the needles into the veins in their wrists.

"The sedative," Eames reminds him. The needles are all connected to a pump like device, neatly nestled within the silver case Arthur had been carrying. He hands John two needles, one for himself and one for Sherlock. "Thought you'd like to do the honors."

John nods thankfully and turns to where Sherlock is lying, his face so calm in the sleep that he looks years younger than he already is. He carefully lifts one of Sherlock's wrists, thinner than he had ever realized, and inserts the needle as gently as he can before repeating the procedure to himself. 

Arthur reaches over to press the button, starting the pump. John can feel himself drifting off only seconds later, sinking into the depths of Sherlock's dreams.

 

He isn't sure what he expected to find in Sherlock's mind. A giant library of information perhaps, or complete chaos. He didn't expect to wake up in a while corridor, endless doors spanning on each side. 

Eames and his team are sitting up all around him, blinking, just as confused, staring up at the cathedral like ceiling, backs pressed against antique colored walls.

John still feels tired, sedated. 

"Why do I still want to sleep?" John asks to no one in particular. 

Cobb, who had been the first standing, slides back down to the ground. "We aren't in the first layer." he says, sounding astounded. We're in an in between state of asleep and awake."

"Mind palace." John breathes, reaching over to touch a mahogany door. He twists it open a fraction, and inside he can see dim lights and low laughter, the smell of Italian and wine. Their first night, at Angelo's. "Are we stuck here?"

"No," Arthur says, looking around impressed. "He really is a genius, this is the most complete design of the method of loci I've ever seen." he is still looking around, tapping the floor as if to make sure it was real. It's not, of course. "It'll just take longer for us to sink through to the first layer of the dream."

John nods, standing up despite the fact that his legs are now wobbling, the drugs in his veins starting to kick in. He had always imagined what it must be like, the mind palace...

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Cobb says, though his tone isn't serious enough to dissuade him. 

John is reaching for a door, a the door labeled in big bronze plates JOHN, when he sinks into the dream.

 

*

 

One day, John leaves for work and comes back not half an hour later. Sherlock hasn't moved from his position on the couch, but he makes the effort to sit up and raise his eyebrows when he notices that John is wearing a different set of clothes.

"Sherlock," John breathes, looking rather shocked. Sherlock thinks he might be ill, and almost relishes in the idea. At least it'll be something _different._

"Yes?" he asks, standing up and moving closer to his flat mate. "John, why is your shirt different? Why do you smell like a hospital?"

John blinks rapidly before answering, and his voice is slightly shaky. He looks caught in between debilitating sadness and happiness, although Sherlock was probably just misinterpreting human emotions again. 

He yawns and checks his phone. No cases.

"I had to change my shirt at the surgery, spilled stuff all over my old one. You're probably smelling the antiseptic." 

Sherlock knows its not the truth, but his mind cannot formulate another possibility. Instead of thinking further on it, he lifts a hand and brushes at John's collar, red with black buttons. 

"You haven't worn this shirt in ages. I'd deleted the fact that you owned it."

 

*

 

They don't wake up in the first layer. They don't wake up in Limbo.

All six of them wake up on a red double decker bus, in the middle of Trafalger Square. Rather than get off, Cobb tells them all to stay on.

They ride for an hour at least, only departing from the bus once they've gone a mile or two right out of the city. They take the tube back into central London, collapsing on a row of benches facing the park.

Nobody has said a thing, not the entire time. John doesn't know whether this is what a normal dream looks like, although the distantly stunned expressions on the dream sharers' faces suggest otherwise.

"He's dreamt up London," John finally says, looking around, into the trash bin next to the bench and nudging the grass under his feet. It all looks real, impossibly detailed. A woman jogs by, and the movement brushes air against John's face. "All of London, perfectly."

"He's dreamed up more than that," Eames breathed, turning to Cobb. "This is the largest dream I've ever seen. For all we know he could have dreamed up the entire world."

"You're right," Cobb mutters, plucking a blade of grass from the ground. It blows away in his hand on a breeze. "What's your friend like again, John?"

"Brilliant." John says, without thinking. "The most brilliant man I've ever met, possibly one of the most brilliant men on earth."

"And logical I bet, if he's anything like his brother, correct?" Eames asks, leaning forward, his eyes bright with an idea. "Dreams aren't supposed to be logical."

"Logic is his life," John says carefully, looking at a leaf lying crumpled on the ground. "Are you saying he's made his dreams like this because of logic?"

"It would make sense." Arthur says, looking fascinated. "His intellect would allow for the fine detail and sheer mass of this dream, but the logical boundaries would explain why he hasn't created anything new." he looks around, staring at all the people in the city. "Do you recognize any of the projections?"

"No," John says, but then he takes a closer look and blinks. "Except... That's Greg Lestrade and... There I am. Walking to the surgery. Morning commute."

"That's good," Ariadne says, and her voice startles John. She hasn't said much in the few hours John's known her. "It means we can pay Sherlock a visit without him seeing double."

 

*

 

They all wait outside, getting imaginary coffee in an imaginary Speedy's, while John makes his way inside the flat. The door is unlocked, as Sherlock always leaves it, and he almost wants to go and berate the projection of himself for not locking it behind him. 

His footsteps are loud and quick coming up the steps; he can't imagine seeing Sherlock again, moving and talking and _living,_ after such a long time of staring at a still body, breathing on mechanical machines. He pushes open the door and freezes.

Sherlock is lying across the sofa in his blue dressing gown, curls sticking up at odd ends, hands steepled in thought. He sits up and quirks an eyebrow at John when he enters, standing in one fluid motion.

John feels like he can hardly breathe, grasps for words. 

"Sherlock," he breathes, clenching his fists in an effort to not launch himself at the other man. He wants to tell him he loves him and kill him for leaving him all at once, and the emotions cross each other out until he is just left standing there, in shock.

"Yes?" Sherlock says, moving closer, close enough to touch. He comes so close that John can feel the heat from his body and the barest brush of breath on his skin. He almost jumps out of his skin when Sherlock reaches over and fingers the material of his collar, and the nail of his thumb feels completely _real_ against his neck. "John, why is your shirt different? Why do you smell like a hospital?"

John curses himself for not remembering the clothes. The projection of John had been wearing a white sweater; he had on a red polo for god's sake.

He blinks and clumsily lies. "I had to change my shirt at the surgery, spilled stuff all over my old one. You're probably smelling the antiseptic."

It's obvious from his fractionally narrowed eyes that Sherlock doesn't believe him, but for once the detective doesn't say a thing. Instead Sherlock looks once more to the offending clothes garment.

"You haven't worn this shirt in ages. I'd deleted the fact that you owned it."

John raises an eyebrow despite his nervousness, and wonders if the projection John wears only white sweaters or wears only the things Sherlock remembers him wearing. He wonders if, in all the details, he can still find faults in this world. 

Sherlock returns to the couch, talking as he walks. "What are you here for then?"

"Ah," John stalls, glancing around the flat. His eyes find the silver form of his laptop, lying in the midst of Sherlock's desk and books. "I came to get my laptop. Have to write up a report on one of my patient's treatments."

He walks over and takes it off the desk. By the time he's made it to the door and hazards one more glance back, Sherlock is already deep within his mind palace, completely unaware of the world. 

Completely unaware, then, of the fact that John lingers for almost five minutes, just staring and longing to drag Sherlock back to surface with him. John wishes it was that easy. 

Sherlock's grip on false reality is too strong.

 

John wakes up and checks the time on the wall clock. Only ten minutes have passed.

"Jesus," he breathes, still sitting slightly stunned while the others have already begun packing up the equipment. "It felt like hours."

"Time is different." Eames reminds him, motioning at his wrist. "Needles." 

"Right," John says, sliding the point out of his vein and doing the same to Sherlock. He hands them back to Eames without looking, unable to tear his eyes away from Sherlock's face, now that he knows that somewhere in that mind of his Sherlock is probably running around chasing criminals, in a London all of his own creation.

 

*

 

That night, John returns wearing his white sweater again. Sherlock pesters him about it incessantly, and John looks at him like he's the one whose gone mad. 

Perhaps he had. It would explain why John's laptop wasn't at work, but rather lying precariously on the first step of the staircase, having been set down there by John's pollo wearing twin.

 

*

 

They go into Sherlock's dreamscape of London three more times before they're ready to execute the actual job. The times in between are spent relentlessly planning in 221B. According to Arthur, this job will be nothing like anything they've ever executed. 

"We don't have the ability to sink layers in this dream." Eames explains one night, erasing the the three drawn levels on the white board and replacing them with single, bold black line. "All we have is this ginormous dreamscape to work with."

"We have to isolate the idea in its purest form." Cobb says, the day before the set date of the job. 

Tomorrow, Sherlock's regular doctor goes on a week long vacation to the states, and a few minutes on a laptop has allowed Arthur to hack into St. Bart's computer systems and alter the schedule so that the substitute doctor skips room 340A on all his rounds.

"Alright," Eames says, rubbing his hands together. Everyone is gathered in a casual circle, facing a whiteboard of notes and ideas. "The most basic form of the idea lies in his perception of reality. His dream has perfect physics." Eames draws a cup of water, only the liquid inside has been tilted sideways, as if gravity's been shifted. "We'll start with suggestion first, I'll plant the idea in his mind using Mycroft. He'll be confused but not convinced, of course, but it'll plant the doubt."

"Then I can start messing with the physics of it all." Ariadne says, looking down at her map of London. "Small things, maybe his experiments start going completely wrong one day, or gravity starts shifting. I could change small details that he would notice on the spot." 

"The number of steps on the stairs." John suggests, mind barely able to grasp at the idea of altering dreams. "Give his microscope an extra lense."

"We'll target people last." Cobb says, writing a list of names onto the board. It's astounding, the sheer amount of knowledge the whole team has accumulated about Sherlock and John's life, in the space of barely a week. On the list there are four people, in list of first implementation to last. 

Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade, and John. 

"They will plant the ideas," Cobb continues. "Mycroft first, and the rest will simply nudge him along. Acting strange, unlike themselves. If your friend is as observant as you say he is, he'll pick up on the difference immediately. You'll be the last straw, telling him to wake up." 

"It sounds like the plan is to slowly drive Sherlock mad." John says, frowning. 

Eames grins, cuffing him on the shoulder. "That's exactly the plan." 

 

They arrive at the hospital around noon, Sherlock's room predictably empty. John slides the injection needle into Sherlock's thin wrist and can't stop himself from brushing away the stray curls resting against Sherlock's motionless face. 

"I'm bringing you back today." he murmurs, ignoring the looks the team sends him, a smirk from Eames and a questioning, sad look from Ariadne. "Or I'll stay stuck down there with you." And it's a possibility that Cobb had explained was quite relevant. With the level of sedation they'll be under, killing themselves won't wake them up. It would only sink them further down the dream, into Limbo, where they could be stuck on the shores of Sherlock's subconsciousness for eternity. If ten hours could feel like ten years on the third level of a dream, how long would it feel in Limbo?

Of course, John had accepted without a second thought. He was bringing Sherlock back; if there was any chance at all of saving him, it had to be done.

 

Today, they lock the doors and close the blinds to Sherlock's room, leaning against the walls. All except for John, of course. He sits as he always does, by Sherlock's side. 

Cobb's parting speech is short and to the point. 

"Remember, time is first layer. We'll be under for ten hours in this time, that's a week in the dream. The kick comes on day four. The sedative will be too heavy for us to wake up for the first five days, but on the sixth we can all wake up if need be."

"Shoot ourselves in the head?" John asks, knowing the answer.

"Basically," Eames answers. They're all connected to the pump, and Eames is reaching over to press the releasing button. 

In the last second before he drifts off, John feels the soft material of the hospital bed sheets and the nudge of Sherlock's thumb against his head.

 

There is a brief moment in which John feels cold tile against his back, and his fingers brush polished mahogany doors, but the sedative is so strong this time around that he sinks right through to Sherlock's dream. He almost wishes they wouldn't sink through quite so soon, that he could just explore the mind palace for a while. See what was behind his door. 

This time around they wake up in Trafalger Square, sitting side by side on the benches lining one of the two fountains. John gets up and blinks, looking down at the flowing water that rushes only a few inches from his fingertips. He touches it and it feels wet and cold, as water does. 

Everything is unnervingly real.

Ariadne is kneeling down, touching the concrete, something like wonder on her face. 

"The detail is amazing."

She's right, of course. They make their way out of the square and into the tube, taking it to the outskirts of London, where an abandoned warehouse stands. It is an exact replica of the one up above in the real world. They had chosen it in an area not densely populated up above. It would by them more time, when the projections started to converge.

"Down to the damn rust stains." Eames laughs, and indeed, the pattern of maroon is as notably blotched down the side of the warehouse door here as it was above. An exact replica. "When we wake him up, I'm meeting this guy."

Inside, Ariadne has designed one of the few alterations in Sherlock's dream. She's turned the outward looking warehouse into a livable area on the inside, kitchen, bedrooms, and a makeup room for Eames to dream up all his disguises. If John had had any doubt of his abilities as a forger, they are gone now; the second time they had went into Sherlock's dreamscape, Eames had tried out his Mycroft disguise, which had flat out convinced John that he had been accosted by Mycroft's projection.

They settle down in the place where they have set up to plan, and it looks suspiciously like the inside of 221B.

"Do we have to worry about projections?" 

Of the little John knows and remembers of his dream sharing days, he will probably never forget the time all the projections had converged on him and close to tore him to pieces. The projections in Sherlock's mind hadn't seemed to be paying much attention to them yet, but Cobb had warned that they would eventually catch on to the foreign nature of the other dreamers, converging on them like white blood cells.

"Not until around day six, or whenever Sherlock realizes he's dreaming." Cobb answers, lying back in the sofa. The only one who is actual busy at this stage is Eames, hidden behind a mirror. When he emerges he is wearing a three piece suit, and is, for all intents and purposes, Mycroft Holmes. 

"Hello, John." he says, and his voice is spot on. He smiles in that benign, pleasant way that Sherlock absolutely despises, and then laughs. His voice morphs back into Eames's tone. "Wish me luck."

You'll need it, John thinks, and repeats his sentiment out loud. 

 

When Eames returns, after what feels like more than two hours (although it's probably been only ten minutes in real life), John and the rest of them jump up out of sheer boredom.

John asks, "How did it go?"

The same moment that Eames says, "You're boyfriend is a lazy prick."

There's a small moment of silence interrupted by Arthur and Ariadne giggling inappropriately in the background.

John smiles, an absurd amount of fondness rising at the thought of Sherlock arguing with Mycroft like he used to.

"So you met him, then?"

"Told him that his world isn't real. Didn't seem to convince him too much."

"That's good." Cobb says, spinning his top on the surface of a table. John watches it, spinning forever. "We don't need to convince him. All we need is the idea in there."

Eames goes behind the mirror again, and steps out as himself, grey suit replacing the pin stripes and blazer Mycroft was so fond of wearing. He plops down on the sofa and puts his legs up. 

"I'm going to sit this round out. Have fun teaching the doctor over there how to fuck with physics."

John wills the water still in Cobb's glass to rise and splash Eames in the face. He smiles at Eames's sputtering indignation.

"I've already done this before." he reminds them all, and goes to grab his coat. The second step is next, the one where they mess with Sherlock's world. Quite literally.

 

*

 

The days following Mycroft's rather odd visit are even odder to begin with. The only thing that doesn't seem to be changing is John.

This morning John is wearing that red pollo of his. 

He wakes up, makes Sherlock tea, and then leaves for work. There are no new cases for Sherlock to take, there are never any interesting ones anymore.

He is sitting at his microscope, peering at three day old mold, when his phone chimes with a new email. It's from Lestrade.

_Sherlock,_

_We've got a suicide murder, Trafalger Square. Broad daylight and no leads._

_G. Lestrade._

Sherlock doesn't even look at the keys, his thumbs flying so fast in his reply.

_I'll take it. Where are you?_

_SH_

_Crime scene._

_G. Lestrade_

 

Sherlock is in such a rush to actually stimulate his brain for once that he is out of the flat and in the taxi before he realizes he doesn't have his coat on.

Not a problem; minor detail. The odds of him contracting an illness in the rather warm weather is next to none. He types a text to John while looking out the window, eyes flickering across the city he hasn't stepped foot in for almost a week. 

_Murder suicide. Trafalger Square._

_SH_

He sends it, and hesitates for only a moment before sending another one.

_Might be dangerous._

_SH_

The reply come faster than usual. There is no signature at the end, but Sherlock knows that John doesn't have his signature set to the automatic. Human error.

_I'll be there soon._

**Author's Note:**

> Tell what you thought (not finished, of course) :)  
> Feedback is quite important to me. 
> 
> Also, if you haven't watched Inception, go do it.  
> Now. Why are you even still here.  
> It is perfection.


End file.
